This invention relates to containers and more particularly to containers fashioned from a unitary blank of paperboard or other stiff, resilient, and foldable sheet material. The container is in the form of a rectangular parallelepiped, sometimes termed a brick pack. The container exhibits particular utility for the packaging of food products such as highly viscous, concentrated fruit juices or frozen juice concentrates.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,754,917 issued to Gordon et al and 4,785,993 issued to Lisiecki disclose rectangular parallelepiped shaped containers having a flat end closures wherein no raw edges of the paperboard at an end closure are exposed to the carton contents. At least the inner surface, and usually also the outer surface, of such containers are coated with a barrier layer, usually polyethylene, which has been extruded onto the surfaces of the blanks from which the cartons are formed. The contents of these cartons are dispensed through a pour opening in one of the end closure panels.
While satisfactory for the purposes intended, these constructions suffer the drawback that the container contents, if frozen, are difficult to remove. The user must either thaw the package to permit pouring of the contents from a pour opening in the carton, or resort to attempting to saw or manually rip the container to obtain the frozen brick.